Anise

Great food, great service and staff. Will go back again probably for my remaining 3 days in Brisbane.

One of the best places to take a date in Brisbane. Hands down.
Great food and wine. Great seasonal menu. Friendly staff.
Honestly what more could you ask for? (Hot date, optional).

They always say looks are deceiving. On first glance, Anise looks like a nice, quaint, hole-​in-​the-​wall style wine bar. But it is so much more, with a full dinner menu and degustation option on offer.
The interior is designed around a classic wine bar with plush leather bar seating, wine bottle-​adorned bar, dim lighting and exposed red brick walls. It is a very intimate dining, or drinking, experience with only 21 seats in total; most of which are around the bar. A sole record player adds to the ambience with some classic tunes.
Anise offers a full dinner menu with some cutting edge, fine dining quality dishes. Highlights include the cuttlefish tartare with black sesame, lime and daikon, the potato gnocchi with pea velouté, lemon, thyme, pecorino and jerusalem artichoke and the wagyu flank with grains, flowers and sprouts. The dessert highlight, and must try, is the mandarin and thyme crème brûlée with olive oil sponge and orange. A range of cheese is on also offer.
A six course degustation with a selection of dishes from the menu is available Tuesday to Saturday. Matched wines are also available, all of which were matched well with the dishes. Monday night, affectionately dubbed Magnum Mondays, offers a four course set menu paired with wines in large format bottles for a measly $ 45.
Although situated slightly out of the CBD, New Farm is becoming a haven for quality food and drink, and Anise certainly sets a benchmark that rivals its city counterparts.

Anise, to me, is the classic sophisticated restaurant that excels at showing locals and visitors alike a great night out. In amongst the bright lights of the rapid opening of new venues, this is a restaurant that remains true to their roots and seem unswayed by trend-​driven dining.
I’ve now dined at Anise twice for their Magnum Monday special. $ 45 for four courses with matched wines (additional per glass). As well as creating inspired dishes, wine is what Anise knows best. Your glass (or bottle) isn’t left to chance as the staff are able to match a variety to your taste and on both occasions have known the wines available inside and out.
Equally, the food on both occasions has been a delight. The first, a vegetarian focused menu and most recently one that saw us dine on duck, lamb and seafood in amongst our four balanced courses. Where the Magnum Monday offer shines is offering an introduction to degustations. If a full dego isn’t for you, four courses is that right number to take you on a journey and certainly not let you go home hungry.
And yes, the serving sizes are not as big as the moon. This is a dining experience. You are to savor the flavour of each dish not resent it from over gorging yourself.

Anise offer Magnum Monday’s — a set four course menu paired with vintage wines for $ 45.00.
If you’re silly, like me, you might confuse the above wording for thinking the price included the wine — given it’s in the name of the offer. It doesn’t. The wine was lovely but an additional $ 15.00 a glass.
On the night I attended the set menu was vegetarian — I didn’t know this ahead of time, but I’m not a huge meat eater so I wasn’t fussed to miss meat for the night. I’m informed the menu ordinarily involves meat and is usually published on their Facebook page that day if you would like to avoid a surprise on attendance.
You ought to book in advance. Anise is intimately sized. The night I attended there was 8 diners in total, with two more turning up at 8.30pm as we were finishing. The venue would probably only seat a maximum of 16 or so people.
Overall I have to say the food was delicious — if fine dining sized. The two entrees were zucchini flower, celeriac paste, roasted onion, red oak leaves; and, cubed eggplant, pistachio dukkah, beetroot and crème fraîche droplets, edible flowers. Gosh, they were flavoursome! Beautifully matched with different textures and notes, I really couldn’t fault the taste. Ordinarily, I’d like my sizes a little larger but for $ 45.00 in total, it’s to be expected.
The main was a three mushroom goulash with Russian rice noodles and a dollop of chived crème fraîche. The smell of this dish was just beautiful — heady, and rich. But unfortunately the taste didn’t quite get there. The meal size was comparatively larger than the entrees, but not what I would call generous. I was left feeling that the whole meal could have used some grated cheese, or a middle flavour stirred through the goulash to give it some depth and interest.
Lastly was dessert. It was probably close to perfect. Truffled rice-​flour cake, pumpkin gelato and candied nuts. The cake was beautifully moist and dense, really similar to a good quality friand. The pumpkin gelato was just the right blend of creaminess, fluffiness, and natural-​level of sweetness to balance out the cake. I could have eaten two or three of these.
The wine was a 1994 Riesling, aged til it was almost pink in colour. It was smoky and yet crisp and almost bitey. Really lovely to drink.
I’d come again for the quality of the food but I might have a large lunch first…

Absolutely delightful.
The last of my splurgy degustations in September, Anise was at first hesitant, but then delicious and charming. Perhaps the gentleman behind the bar was restrained while trying to work out what kind of people we were, but once we’d shown our true colours (this generally happens quite quickly) he was nothing but charm and a little bit of sass.
The food, though: the food was ridiculous. So good! Of the seven courses we had, I can’t say that there was one dish I was unimpressed with, or even on the fence about. All were delicious, from the oyster right through to the chocolate mousse — which is a bit remarkable, because I don’t even like chocolate mousse.
The dim lighting made it hard for us to get decent photos of our food (I’m sorry, but the camera always eats first) — I’m not obnoxious enough to use flash for seven courses. But that was the only negative, and the list of positives is fairly lengthy. Seating around the bar makes for an intimate evening, the soundtrack was superb, the matched wines were delicious (and so well matched) and every dish was delectable. You win, Anise.

Anise is a teeny tiny little bar/​restaurant in a long skinny room on Brunswick street. They specialise in wine and food matching, and also pride themselves on quality drinks. The cuisine at Anise is predominantly French and you can swing it so you just get a bar snack of potatoes, bruschetta, or similar as a bar snack of sorts, or get a full on three-​course meal. When I say Anise is tiny, I really mean it. It seats about twenty-​one people. All of the seating except for one table by the window is bar seating so be ready to cosy up next to a stranger or two.
If you’re a wine lover and also happen to be hungry, Anise offers ‘flights’. I hadn’t heard of flights until I came to Anise but it basically means that just say you ordered the duck then they’d offer you a flight of pinots. That means you’d get a half glass or so of about five different pinots that match with your duck and you can drink all of them or pick what you like. Experiences like this are really interesting and informative if you’re a bit of a foodie or wine-​lover. What makes the flights even more informative is how extremely knowledgable the staff at Anise are. They’re very helpful and friendly, and are happy to leave you to your own devices or offer advice.
Because of the very limited seating at Anise, I’d recommended booking at least a few days in advance. If you just turn up, chances are there’ll be no spare seats, although I have had the good fortune of finding a few seats at the bar around 11pm (after the dinner rush) without a booking, but that was just a lucky walking-​past thing and I was only having drinks so it wouldn’t have mattered too much if I’d missed out. My point is that if you want a guarantee, bookings are essential.

Anise is almost alarmingly hip. I mean, you can’t get more exclusive than a 21 seat restaurant.
Having been lucky enough to live in Paris for a year I can confirm it does feel very Parisian. As Suzannah says, the majority of the seating is at the bar, and I haven’t seen such a huge range of pastis since leaving France.
I also snuck in on my way home for a post meal digestif, and was dead impressed at the range. I was also extremely jealous of the French onion soup my neighbour was eating and if I’d had the room I would have eaten one on the spot.
I will definitely book and visit for a proper meal soon. It’s a bit pricier than your average meal, so if you’re like me it’ll probably be a special occasion kind of venue, but we all need a little something special now and then.